


Abusing the Bodies of Man

by Masu_Trout



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Doomed Relationship, F/M, Pre-Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Secrets, Unethical Medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-16 00:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16943403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Megan has some secrets she regrets keeping. But she's going to tell Adam the truth.Eventually.





	Abusing the Bodies of Man

Megan isn't quite sure what she's expecting when she first runs her tests on Adam's blood. 'Nothing at all' would be most likely, of course—it's not like she has any reason to be testing him. It's just a whim, is all, the sort of thing that starts sounding like an absolutely hilarious idea when you've pulled nine twelve-hour days in a row and the end is nowhere in sight.

 _Guess what, Adam? Still no clue why my analysis program throws a null pointer three times out of four, but on the plus side you're perfectly healthy!_

It sounds better in her head than it would in real life, she's sure, and it doesn't even sound very good in her head.

She knows what she isn't expecting, though: results. Strange, strange results, different not just from her project's control group but from anything she's ever seen before. 

Adam's results, if they're accurate, don't just make him an outlier. They mark him as something not entirely human.

And that's exactly the point where Megan realizes she's being ridiculous. She's been working too late. Spending too much time in her lab. Adam's the man who hogs the covers whenever the mid-winter Michigan chill seeps into their bedroom, the man who sneaks scraps of bacon to Kubrick every chance he gets no matter how much she scolds him, the man whose grooming habits go beyond impeccable and into mildly obsessed.

All Megan needs is a reality check. A reality check and a good night's sleep, and her old friend from college—now working in a big-deal lab up in Canada for a big-deal company called Ketherian—won't be any use for the second, but might be able to help with the first. Rebecca was always the more grounded between them. Whatever error in her analysis it is that Megan can't quite manage to track down, Rebecca will find it in a day flat. Maybe less.

She'll tell Adam after, Megan decides as she sends the email off. Once it comes back negative, with Rebecca chiding her for working too long and getting too excited and seeing phantom discoveries in perfectly normal DNA. It'll be a funny little story for the two of them to share: the time Megan thought her boyfriend was _so special_ she snuck his swabs out to be analyzed by her friend in genetics.

It's not a big deal. She packs up the sample and ships it off and she doesn't think anything more of it.

\--

Except the tests come back anything but negative. Rebecca sends her back fifteen pages of analysis so full of overwhelmed excitement they're right on the cusp of illegible, and Megan looks across the kitchen table at Adam (four days into unemployment, still too quiet and too still, waking up twice a night shaking and gasping and trying not to disturb her), and thinks, _really?_

It's not... she knows he's someone special. There's no question she's lucky to have him. But there's a difference between _fiance material_ special and _one-in-a-billion genetic mutation_ special.

She could sit him down and ask him about it now. Maybe he'd have some idea why he might be this way. But it would be awkward to explain just why she suddenly has all this information, and more difficult to explain why she thinks it might matter. And anyway, there's still a chance it'll all come to nothing. 

Rebecca was always an idealist. She had more of an eye for concepts than repeatable research, and landing that Ketherian job has only put her head further into the clouds. Megan needs someone else she can run her odd little discovery past. And, thankfully, she knows just the person.

She'll tell Adam soon, she decides. After she's talked to David.

\--

David starts out reading Rebecca's analysis at his desk, leaning back in his chair with Megan across from him. By page three he's standing. Page five has his lip caught between his teeth, fingers curled around the printouts so tightly his augmented hand risks tearing through the paper. At page seven he starts pacing, back and forth in tight lines across his office, and he doesn't stop until the very last line of the last rumpled page.

"Megan," he says hoarsely. There's a look in his eyes she's never seen before, a sort of hawk-sharp intensity focused entirely on her. "You have to get working on this. Yesterday."

"I..." This isn't what she expected. David's the ruthless businessman, the one who balances cost and time and money, the man in charge of shooting down the science team's wild, money-sucking dreams. Part of her expected him to pop this bubble too.

"How much do you need?" he asks. "Budget? Manpower? The Typhoon's near-ready. We can divert half the team off it, at least."

The Typhoon is barely half-there. They both know that. It should keep Sarif Industries' best researchers tied up for at least another year. 

"I—I can't," she says, floundering. "There's consent forms, and IRB registration, and Adam's been out of work for a week now and you want me to tell him he's _adopted_? Ask him if he doesn't mind being a science experiment while I'm at it, because, oh, by the way, his DNA is mutated?"

David sits down heavily back in his chair, spreads his mismatched hands across the desk. Palms up. Begging for alms. He's not using his CASIE, but there's something horribly compelling in his expression nonetheless. "Megan. I understand. Trust me, I do. But this isn't... some eye with ten percent better color detection, or a sturdier leg, or a more flexible spinal cord. This is _life_. This is a person dying waiting on the organ donor's list because they have CCD and can't get an augmented heart. You've got a chance to become the next Jonas Salk and you want to wait?"

Megan blinks. For a moment she can't even speak. She swallows around the lump in her throat and manages to get out, "Jonas... Salk?" 

_Are you kidding?_ she doesn't say, because her boss jokes around a lot but he isn't joking now. She's never been more sure of anything in her life than she is of that.

David's vision of the future dances before her eyes: no more neuropozyne dependency, no more Versalife monopoly. No more Darrow Deficiency Syndrome leaving patients to die from treatable conditions. A disease named after the visionary Hugh Darrow, with a cure named after _her_.

"Okay," she says, "okay," and David's sudden smile is like the sun coming up. "Just give me an evening, all right? To explain it to Adam."

David nods and says, offhand, "You know, if you want to make things a little easier on him..."

That night at dinner, when Adam asks how her day went, she powers down her newspaper and smiles at him and says, "Actually, I talked to my boss. Sarif. He's... interested in you. I think he might want to offer you a job."

Megan lets him have his excitement. It's the first time she's seen him smile in a week, and— _God_ , she doesn't want to ruin it. She'll tell him the rest once he's settled in at SI. They're working together now, after all. There'll be plenty of time.

\--

And then comes the research. Long hours in the labs, Adam adjusting to a life outside the police force (alone, she knows, because she's never home), breakfast from a nutrient pill and dinner from a vending machine. She and Adam catch up with each others' lives over email and instant message, five, ten minutes at a time, and eventually _I'll tell him next time_ becomes _I'll tell him sometime_. 

Even when they're face-to-face, now, she feels somehow distant. Megan spends eighteen hours a day prodding at his cells. Studying their form, their uniqueness. Watching as they bind to tissue and metal in ways that should be impossible. After that, the human Adam feels... reduced, somehow. Like a faded imitation of his own living tissue. Less than the sum of his parts.

(And, deeper down, more shameful than even that: some weeks she catches herself looking at him and feeling _jealous_. If she'd been the one with this inside her, if it was her DNA on the table, she'd never have to worry about any of this. She'd be the miracle, instead of the one watching it happen.)

The breakup, when it comes, shouldn't be a surprise. It is. 

Adam leaves her the house, the dog, the furniture. He's always been too generous for his own good.

In return, Megan keeps her mouth shut. It would only hurt him if she told him now, if she piled more pain on top of what her distance has caused him. She'll give him a little bit of space, a little bit of time, and then she'll sit him down and talk. 

Later, she thinks. She'll tell him later. 

\--

The upcoming UN meeting blindsides her, knocks her down with all the force of an oncoming bullet train. It's her turn now to shake herself awake with nightmares; she imagines the heads of countries standing up and asking her, _But where did you get these samples? From who? What authorization did you have to take them?_

Before she knows it, she's supposed to be meeting them tomorrow. She still hasn't said a thing.

Adam's awkward around her now, so stiff and quiet and distant, and that makes it worse. How can she tell him _now_? How can she drop something like this on him and then expect him to fly to another country to protect her and Sarif and the rest of the team before he even gets the chance to process it? 

Later, Megan thinks, later, later, but later's not good enough anymore. _Tomorrow_ , she thinks instead, and that's—right. Scary, but right. She'll talk to the UN like the scientist she is and then talk to Adam like the person she once was to him. She'll put it all on the table and let the chips fall where they may.

Tomorrow. A deadline. For the first time in months, she feels a sense of relief. Tomorrow will be better.

\--

 _Tomorrow_ comes half a year later in a cold white room in a black site in Singapore, staring at a man she hardly recognizes anymore.

It isn't better.

**Author's Note:**

> Technically, this is Jossed - I didn't realize until after I wrote this that Quinn's intel in Missing Link has Adam and Megan as broken up _three years prior_ to Adam taking the SI job which also makes everything Megan and David did seem even skeevier, wow \- but it fits well with canon other than that one terminal and also I really like this piece, so.


End file.
